


your voice will make it through

by romanitas



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 10:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11757840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanitas/pseuds/romanitas
Summary: Even across the planets, Jyn and Cassian understand each other and all the extra meanings behind every word.Or, when please come home means I love you.





	your voice will make it through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violently_blue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violently_blue/gifts).



> from a prompt on tumblr: "things you said with too many miles between us / gimme that rebelcaptain garbage ofc"
> 
> we've all just given up explanations to survival by this point right? cool. rated T for language.

Jyn sinks into the chair beside Bodhi and presses her face against the cool metallic table. She can hear him chewing up the last of his food, and while normally she teases him for being so polite all the time, she’s grateful for the few more moments of quiet.

“Cassian told me to tell you hi,” he says finally. “I mean, hello, from me too obviously. You look beat. How was Corellia?”

“Garbage,” she says, rolling her head so she can look at him from the table. “Shouldn’t he have said ‘goodbye,’ since I’m assuming that means he’s off on some other secret mission neither of us can know a thing about?”

Bodhi shoves another portion in his mouth. “You’ll have to ask him,” he replies with a mouthful, and Jyn feels proud of him.

“Sure, I’ll just go hijack a ship and do that right now.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to shoot the messenger?”

“Saw always advised that sometimes we _do_ need to shoot the messenger,” she says wickedly, finally picking her head up just so she can steal some of his food. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Cassian’s an idiot about goodbyes.”

They don’t particularly like them. She’s never actually told him _goodbye_ ; it’s always a ‘see you later’ or ‘good luck,’ because there’s something finalizing about goodbye that Jyn doesn’t want to breathe to life. She’s had too many of them.

Bodhi gives her a pointed look, pot meet kettle, which Jyn promptly ignores in favor of stealing more of his food. “You _can_ get your own,” he sighs, even though he makes no sign of pushing his tray to stop her.

“Can’t. Too tired. I’m just going to lay here for a while and let you feed me.”

“You can have my potatoes. They’re too bland today for me.”

“Great, I stuff my face with Corellian potatoes for days and come back to starchy Rebellion ones,” is what she says, but much like Bodhi didn’t stop her from stealing his food, Jyn doesn’t actually mind. She has plenty of food preferences, but there’s very little she won’t eat, and she rarely complains for real having known what it’s like to feel starving. She picks the wedges off Bodhi’s plate and listens to him chatter about his day, about his training, and stubbornly does not think about Cassian being off planet. Or at least pretending she isn’t.

-

Cassian stumbles into his quarters, awake enough to be functioning but near enough to completely passing out as soon as he hits the mattress. He was already a few hours behind returning from Kuat, but he still needed to debrief with Draven, which took another hour, and just because he’s used to running on anywhere from three to zero hours of sleep doesn’t mean it can’t catch up with him.

He locks the door behind him and takes his boots off while standing, knowing full well they won’t come off at all if he reaches the bed first. His room is smaller than the one he had on Yavin 4, but it’s not like the current base is long term. Trying to track down a good enough planet for Base One is proving arduous.

He manages to wash the grime and dried blood from his face – minor scratches only – in the refresher, but a real shower will have to wait till he’s less likely to collapse and drown in the water. By the time he comes back to his bed, he has to pause, spotting a small square on his pillow, off white enough to catch in the dim lighting of the room. Brow furrowing, he approaches cautiously, feeling his body go tense even in the wake of how desperately he wants to sleep. He squints at it.

_Hi back._

It takes him a second, but Cassian finds himself smiling. She hasn’t signed it, but it isn’t like anyone else but Jyn would come inside his room and leave a message like this. The smile falters a little once he realizes this means _she’s_ now off planet, and he hates that he doesn’t know where in this moment, even if he can probably find out tomorrow. He wonders where she managed to even scrounge up such a tiny piece of paper.

He lifts it up and reads it again and thinks about how her nose probably scrunched up in annoyance while writing it. He sets it on the small desk beside his bed then all but collapses on the mattress, exhaling with the soft feel under him – it’s far from luxury bedding, but it’s better than a hard floor. It doesn’t take long for him to pass out, but he does so with that same smile still on his face.

-

She fidgets on her feet and refuses to acknowledge anything she’s feeling as _anxiousness_ , because that would be stupid and Jyn Erso is not stupid. It’s not because she can see Cassian chatting with Draven, the first time she’s seen him in two weeks – she’d be glad to see _any_ of her friends after that long, now that she has friends. She hugs Bodhi every time she returns to base!

After a few more moments, Draven nods and Cassian nods, and they break apart. Jyn sucks in a breath and feels her cheeks puff out, which is of course when Cassian finally looks over and sees her. There’s no wide and unapologetic smile, but his eyes go softer, and it’s all she could possibly ask for. He makes his way over to her with quick steps, and she’s forgotten what it was like to have someone so seemingly excited by simply seeing her.

Her fingers itch to hug him when he finally gets close enough, but he hesitates from doing the same, so it stops her. She opens her mouth, and the only thing that comes out is: “Hi.”

Cassian doesn’t laugh, but his eyes look like they want to. “Hi back.”

Jyn would like to tell herself she doesn’t smile, but it would be a lie. It doesn’t mean she’s not going to deny it to anyone who might even dare to bring it up. “I stole some rum, while I was on Corellia. Want to try it?”

He doesn’t smile either, but his mouth curls in something close enough to send a fluttering through her heart, thankfully trapped behind her ribs. “We have some on base. You probably didn’t need to steal it.”

“It’s rationed. This one’s all ours.” She pauses. “And I suppose Bodhi, when he’s finished his training for the day.”

“Baze and Chirrut?”

“Baze says it doesn’t do shit for him, and Chirrut said he prefers Corellian _wine_.”

Cassian looks almost fond, which is definitely a good look. Jyn reaches out and pokes him in the arm. “So? Don’t make me down the whole thing by myself. I’ll throw up all over your shoes.”

He finally smiles, and even though it’s a tiny one, Jyn still feels like the fluttering has become fireworks. “Give me a half hour. My rooms are bigger.”

She sends Bodhi a message over her comm to meet them there when he’s finished and vehemently pretends she didn’t steal the rum in the first place for the sole purpose of sharing it with Cassian.

-

His current home base is in the Outer Rim, as he shuffles between planets under a mission of recruitment. It’s not any less challenging from undercover work, difficult in different ways, but in  the wake of the Death Star’s destruction, moral is high and favorable towards the Rebellion and people have been joining by the dozens across the galaxy for the last few weeks.

Sometimes, he gets to see Jyn. With the fluctuating bases, she’s currently been assigned on supply runs and raids with Bodhi. Their time overlaps more while he’s recruiting, and communication is easier even when they’re not on the same planet. Jyn is entangling herself into his life in terrifying, exciting ways.

They can’t talk about their missions over the commlinks, but Jyn uses the channel for idle complaints which he should chastise, but in reality he looks forward to hearing, if only because it means she’s still alive. He can say even less in return, mild encouragements and quick messages, but he knows she appreciates the sentiment because it means he’s still alive too.

_I made it back_.

It pings him in the restless period between awake and asleep, and as soon as he reads it, Cassian feels a relief sink into him.

_I’m about to sleep. I’m safe. Good night_.

She doesn’t even reply, but she doesn’t need to. Even with all the literal space between them, it feels like he understands anything else she might want to say anyway.

-

“Are you talking to Cassian again?”

Bodhi’s voice breaks through her focus and the smile on her face dissipates. He doesn’t sound judging – maybe a little fond, almost teasing, and Jyn isn’t having any of it. “No,” she lies. He probably knows it’s a lie. Jyn talks to maybe five people regularly, and only one of them is off base at the moment.

“Is he coming back soon?”

“I don’t know, I’m not talking to him.”

Bodhi sighs heavily and sits down across from her where she’s nestled up near a space heater. She tightens her jaw and refuses to look at him, like it’s giving him victory to acknowledge he was right. He doesn’t say anything else, but it feels like a test, like if she starts typing into her comm it will become very clear he was correct.

It beeps in her hands and she stubbornly refuses to look at it. She knows it’s Cassian, just like Bodhi probably knows it’s Cassian, and the whole situation is dumb but she’s in too deep to just fess up. She is running out of places to look at this point.

“Do you want me to leave you two alone?”

She flips him the finger and he just laughs, but he pulls out his datapad to give her the illusion of privacy. Jyn peeks up at him and waits for an obscenely unnecessary amount of time before pulling up her comm to skim the message waiting.

_You would like the sky here. It turns a little green at sunset._

Jyn bites her cheek, but it doesn’t stop her lips from curling up happily, as annoyed as she is that he made her smile. She likes green. He remembered. Cassian is remembering a lot of things about her, and it fills her with a fondness she isn’t used to allowing.

-

She starts sleeping in his bed. Jyn tells him three days after he leaves that she’s kidnapped his blankets, trusting him to translate everything else. His response is a few hours later, but it’s a casual remark on how comfortable and warm they are compared to some of the other barracks. It surprises her that she can understand he’s telling her it’s okay. Not that she needed permission, but it’s nice to know he wants her there. It makes it easier to bury herself in the blankets and pretend she isn’t smiling. She feels like she’s smiled more since being rescued from Wobani than she had in all the years prior. It’s the good kind of hurt in her muscles.

He sends her another quick message that he misses his own bed, and she takes it to mean he misses her. If her smile widens and her face goes red, she has his blankets to hide it.

-

She isn’t used to getting messages from K-2SO. But when the text slips in barely minutes after she wakes up, Jyn can recognize the tonal shift and concise phrasing as belonging to the droid, not Cassian.

_Return delayed. Relay message to Draven._

Jyn sits up in Cassian’s bed in his blankets and in his shirt and frowns. There are other channels, some that go directly to the communications center depending on level of secrecy. She rereads the message over and over and automatically assumes the worst because her brain has been hardwired for pessimism since she was eight years old and her spark of hope has been delayed.

She scrambles out of bed and pulls on her own clothes, careful to leave the room when the hallway is empty to keep up the illusion of secrecy. She does as asked, passing the message to Draven, and he just frowns at her with a barely perceptive nod of thanks.

Jyn huffs. “That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say?”

“Captain Andor’s mission is sensitive –”

“They _all_  are.”

“ – and if his droid has deigned it necessary to report in, the delay isn’t unexpected. He was prepped for this.”

Jyn leaves the room unsatisfied, completely missing that Draven didn’t even question the communication coming from her. She skulks around base, plays a game of sabacc with Baze, does a little training with Chirrut, eats dinner with Bodhi. When she gets back to her room, she scrolls back through her device’s records. The last thing he sent as himself, _About to land. Take care._

Nothing else comes in for the rest of the day, or the next. Jyn sends her own update that she’s leaving soon, for a quick three day run with Bodhi. She’s very used to Cassian’s radio silence, but she’s usually prepared for it, and it’s not usually preempted by K-2SO. She doesn’t start to really worry until Draven finds _her_ several days later, approaching with a stubborn air of caution while she’s inhaling the slop of sticky soup the Rebellion calls nutritious.

“Have you received anything else?”

Jyn pauses, spoon hovering by her mouth as her stomach bottoms out. “I’d have told you.”

Draven just nods again in that infuriating way, leaving Jyn to stew with her stew. She pulls out her comm.

_What color is the sky tonight?_  (Where are you?)

It goes unanswered for the next two days, but she sends more, a new one each day she hears nothing back.

_I stole you a new blanket._ (It’s for us, when you’re back.)

_Bodhi is trying to teach me how to make something from Jedha._ (Let me try to make it for you.)

_He changed his mind._ (I didn’t blow anything up this time, he’s being stupid.)

_Baze thinks I cheated at sabacc._ (I did, with that trick you showed me.)

_Chirrut walked into a wall and told me it was on purpose, to test how sturdy it was._ (I think he was trying to make me laugh.)

_The four of us have a mission._ (It’s not the same without you.)

_The stew today is still disgusting and I hate it._ (Tell me to shut up and eat it anyway.)

_I saw a droid taller than K2 today._ (If he was here, you’d be here, tell him to get a move on!)

_Draven is growing the weirdest moustache._ (He’s worried about you too.)

_I miss you._

She rolls over in the empty expanse of his bed. It’s been over a month of complete and unexpected radio silence. By this point she has come to the conclusion that he isn’t going to answer her, not until he’s back on base. She refuses to acknowledge any other alternatives. People leave her all the time, but Cassian has never been one of them.

_Please come home_  is sent under the cover of darkness from his room, her heart beating fast as it translates into _I love you._ Maybe he won’t see it. Maybe she won’t get any responses at all. But it’s out there because she needs him and the universe to know. If she cries herself to sleep that night, at least no one will ever know that part.

-

Three days later, her comm goes off. Jyn doesn’t even register it at first, too busy beating the shit out of a punching bag in the training room. When she takes a break to down some water, she notices the little red light and frowns. She’s scheduled for a mission in two days, Bodhi’s off planet on his own flying run, but maybe it’s some new information about the supply ship they’re going to steal –

Jyn almost drops it when she sees it. It’s one word, from an unfamiliar device.

_Hangar._

She flies from the room and swallows down the hope flickering to life between her lungs. She’s a sweaty, filthy, unhappy mess, but she bursts into the hangar bay with all the subtly of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber.

She sees K2 first, tall and lumbering near an unidentified ship, and her feet carry her over before her brain catches up to what it means to spot the droid. She shoves pilots and recruits out of the way, hands balled into fists so tight she’s leaving nailmarks. Hope is a dangerous thing, and she’s trying to stay used to it.

But there he is. His hair is longer, his beard unkempt, there’s an ugly bruise on his cheek, and his clothes are haggard, but his shape is as familiar to Jyn as her mother’s kyber crystal. She stops a few feet away, while he’s speaking to a medic and seemingly waving off their concern. He looks tired but alert, which is eighty percent of the time his state of being.

“Cassian?”

He turns to look at her, and Jyn feels so weak for the sight of it. His face becomes a mess of apologies and longing, but she hurries over before she can do something stupid like cry in front of everyone. 

She hugs him, carefully. She doesn’t know if or where he’s injured, doesn’t know what’s happened to him these last few weeks, but it’s an impossible task to stay out of his arms now that he’s back in reach. It’s not long before his arms do the same, wrapping around her and pulling her in tight against him. His grip feels like he’s trying to tell her a million things at once, but she’s too overwhelmed by finding him again to decipher each little squeeze. He smells a lot like she does – gross and unshowered, essence of oil and smoke for flair. She buries her face in his shoulder and breathes it in anyway.

“I am home,” Cassian says, and Jyn hears him whispering it back, finally, _I love you too._


End file.
